PC World editor quits over censorship of an Apple story

Thursday 3 May 2007 08.40 EDT
First published on Thursday 3 May 2007 08.40 EDT

PC World magazine's multi-award-winning editor-in-chief Harry McCracken has quit, reportedly "because the company's new CEO, Colin Crawford, tried to kill a story about Apple and Steve Jobs," reports Wired News.

Apparently the spat was about a "whimsical" (usually a synonym for "worthless") article called Ten Things We Hate About Apple, which will no doubt get a much higher readership than it deserves when it's leaked via someone's blog. However, Wired News says:

Apparently Crawford also told editors that product reviews in the magazine were too critical of vendors, especially ones who advertise in the magazine, and that they had to start being nicer to advertisers.

This would be as good as a death sentence for PC World, as Crawford ought to know. Is it possible that he doesn't?

Crawford was former CEO of MacWorld and only started at PC World about a month ago. According to the PC World source, when Crawford was working for the Mac magazine, Steve Jobs would call him up any time he had a problem with a story the magazine was running about Apple.

Whether or not that's the case, it's impossible to imagine a similar dispute about an article called, say, Ten Things We Hate About Microsoft. However, Apple's media coverage often seems to lean towards the sycophantic side, whether it's because of doing exclusive deals with Apple, its advertising clout ("Are you running any anti-Apple stories?"), or simply because so many publications (including The Guardian) are run on Macs.

For a recent example, there was a spat at Time, reported in New York magazine, about an exclusive story on the new iPhone, "in which writer Lev Grossman tweaked Apple CEO Steve Jobs about his secretive access to the product ... and suggested that Apple had 'some explaining' to do about backdated stock options". It says:

When the story hit the Web, Jobs called [managing editor Richard] Stengel to complain (as it happens, Apple is a major advertiser in Time, and Jobs is a good friend of Huey's). Stengel reacted by immediately excising the offending paragraphs from the Web (they have since been restored). Then he had Grossman come into the office to rewrite part of the piece for the print edition. Grossman was infuriated.

Jobs also responded to a critical book, iCon, by calling Peter Olson, chief executive of Random House, to try to persuade him to stop publication. When that failed, he banned sales of all Wiley's titles. As The New York Times reported:

some two dozen popular technical titles, including "Dr. Mac: The OS X Files" and "GarageBand for Dummies" (as well as "Macs for Dummies" by David Pogue, a columnist for The New York Times), were removed from Apple store bookshelves and returned to Wiley's distribution center in New Jersey.

The New York Times story concluded:

"It is not possible, aside from things unimagined, to damage his reputation," said Mitchell Kertzman, a partner at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners in San Francisco. "Steve is on such a roll in both of his companies, he's earned the right to do whatever he wants."

Update: on his blog called, with stunning originality,Colin's Corner, Crawford says: "IDG and I hold editorial integrity in the highest regard. PC World, has not been nor will it be influenced by advisers' [sic] pressure" -- presumably he means advertisers' pressure. To which any Cixen would reply: MRDA or Mandy Rice Davies Applies (meaning "he would say that, wouldn't he").